What is RSS?
Tuesday, December 2nd, 2003RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” RSS is coded in XML, a programming language. Web designers often use RSS on their web pages to create news “feeds.” RSS feeds allow users to subscribe to the page, and receive a notice whenever the page is updated.
The RSS feeds can be read or viewed in a News Aggregator, which is a client that searches the web and fetches all of the feeds that a user subscribes to. Users can select which feeds that they want to subscribe to. Once the feeds are gathered with the news aggregator, a user can skim the headlines to see if there is anything of interest to him or her.
This can save the user time, because he does not have to visit all of his favorite sites to check for updates, since the news aggregator checks the sites automatically. In some circles, it is believed that RSS feeds may replace subscription newsgroups and listservs. The technology is catching on, as many well-known websites and content providers are using RSS feeds to stream information to subscribed users.
Additional reading:
Introduction to RSS from WebReference.com
What the Heck is RSS?, from Librarian’s Index to the Internet
A good list of RSS aggregators, many of which are free, can be found here. You will find a brief description of each software package, with links to the software’s homepage, from which you can download it.
There are many options out there, and everyone has a favorite. Currently Tim Smith uses NetNewsWire for Macintosh, and Chad uses Sharpreader and NewsDesk for Windows.
